Beijing | StrippedPixel.com

Black jails and paranoia in the heart of Beijing

Posted on June 3, 2012 by strippedpixel / 2 comment

“We are about to arrive in our nation’s great capital,” the voice on the train’s intercom said. It was Qing Ming Festival proper, as it would be for the following two days, and if we thought people would stay home to spend quality time with their families during this brief but precious holiday, how wrong we were to dismiss the appetite for sightseeing and patriotism of the Chinese tour group.

Escape from Beijing

Posted on August 26, 2011 by strippedpixel / No comments

I needed to be out of Beijing. In a couple of days there was a train from the Mongolian border town of Zamyn-Uud to Ulaanbaatar that I need to be on in order to catch my Ulaanbaatar to Moscow train on Tuesday. If I made that train, it was a leisurely coast home along the Trans-Siberian Railway Siberia and Europe. If I didn’t, I’d be stranded in the middle of Mongolia with a wallet full of useless train tickets and a big plate of “what the heck now?”.

Beijing’s dwindling hutong

Posted on August 23, 2011 by strippedpixel / No comments

Down with the old, up with the new. Such is the way in contemporary China. In every major town and city the past is being replaced or sanitized in the name of tourism and commercialism, these two myopic siblings stomping hand in hand over much of the uniqueness rapidly disappearing.